emerged as a third possibility Wade, 1987, 1988; Ostrom, 1990; Bromley, 1991a,b; Sengupta, 1991;
Ostrom et al., 1994; Singh, 1994. This third possi- bility has been applied in rural India to the case of
forest management. A number of studies signalled the importance of people’s involvement in forest
management Chopra et al., 1990; Palit, 1993; Poffenberger and McGean, 1996; Sarin, 1996.
These studies show that in many institutional settings of rural India, forests are better managed
when voluntary people’s participation is secured. Hence, there exist many situations where people’s
participation is desired, and it is of considerable interest to find conditions under which voluntary
participation takes place, which is the purpose of this paper. Moreover, this paper studies the quali-
tative and quantitative link between participation and socio-economic variables to explore under
which conditions people are most likely to partic- ipate voluntarily in forest management.
This paper is organised as follows. Section 2 reviews relevant literature for this paper by describ-
ing the present situation of forest management in India. Forests are common-pool resources and as
such can be studied as a common-pool resource situation. On the qualitative side, Section 3 pro-
vides some general patterns from different institu- tional settings in three Indian states: Haryana,
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. While each case has evolved in a different way and faces different
problems, they are similar due to voluntary peo- ple’s participation. On the quantitative side, data
that is gathered through interviews is analysed with two methods Section 4. A factor analysis on
indicators of participation identifies different choice situations. General patterns that enhance
participation are derived by multiple regression. This paper concludes by pointing out factors that
should be part of a general strategy for successful forest management.
2. Literature review
2
.
1
. The present situation of forest management in India
Nowadays, the Indian forest cover is reducing at an alarming speed. Chakraborty 1995 goes as far
to say that India may lose all its forests by AD 2010. This calls for serious action to reverse the process
of deforestation.
According to Chakraborty 1995, there are two diametrically opposite viewpoints to the cause of
deforestation in India. On the one hand, the official viewpoint says that an increased demand for fuel-
wood, timber, land for agricultural expansion and housing space leads to forest depletion. They iden-
tify growth in population and livestock in combina- tion with forest dependence and poverty as the
main cause. This official viewpoint states that free rights of the people in the forest has led to depletion
because the people did not contribute much to maintenance and regeneration of the forests.
On the other hand, the popular perception is that the main cause for deforestation lies in the failure
of the forest bureaucracy to secure people’s partic- ipation Chakraborty, 1995, p. 232. The forest
bureaucracy is characterised by centralised efforts, predetermined outcomes, and it is revenue oriented.
In a developing country like India, it is not possible to close the forest for use of the state alone
because many people depend on the forest for basic needs like fuelwood, timber, fodder, medicines, etc.
Unless people’s dependence on the forest is re- duced, by giving them better opportunities, it is
very unlikely that forests can be managed as a state property regime. In the present situation, the only
path to sustainable forest management is by seek- ing people’s participation.
More institutions should emerge at the village level to protect and regenerate the forest. This
requires collective action of all involved parties: the state, non-governmental organisations, and the
people. The focus of this paper is on people only, to see to what extent people’s participation has
been secured so far in existing afforestation activ- ities. I make a comparison between three diverse
institutional set-ups at the village level which provide incentives for people’s participation in
reforestation. The hypothesis under question is to find factors that influence people people’s partici-
pation in forest management where participation consists of three components, namely, contribution
to, benefiting from and involvement in decision
making and evaluation see Pongquan, 1992. Forests are typically an example of a common-
pool resource. The next section treats main in- sights
from the
literature on
common-pool resources.
2
.
2
. The common-pool resource situation The problem of managing a CPR, or simply the
CPR problem, has become a topic of debate after the appearance of Hardin’s 1968 ‘tragedy of the
commons’. To analyse the CPR problem, it is useful to distinguish between the CPR situation
and the CPR dilemma. In a CPR situation there are multiple individuals who are using a CPR.
This becomes a CPR dilemma when the following conditions hold simultaneously:
Individual strategies lead to suboptimal out- comes for the group due to uncoordinated
behaviour.
There are institutional feasible alternatives. Ostrom et al., 1994.
The CPR situation is generally not a dilemma, as Hardin presumes. The three case-studies in this
paper are all examples of CPR situations only. CPR dilemmas existed in the past, but they were
resolved through institutional change. The histori- cal processes which led to the institutional change
are briefly narrated below, but the focus is on the stability of the present institutional set-up in the
three CPR situations.
Initially, the solution to CPR dilemmas was sought in either full privatisation of property
rights or full centralisation of the power to the state i.e., government Hardin, 1968; Hardin and
Baden, 1977. On the one hand, many CPRs are not divisible, like sea-fisheries and the ozone
layer. In such a situation privatisation is simply impossible. Further, division may not be desirable
for optimal use of the resource units because the newly allotted owners simply do not have the
private resources to regenerate these already de- graded resources. On the other hand, solutions
were sought through the state by using taxes or subsidies. However, state property regimes are
also degrading. For instance, in Uttarakhand the state was unable to manage the forests solely as a
state property regime. People’s protests led them to formulate the law on forest panchayats where
people are fully responsible for managing their ‘communal forests’. The state, generally, fails to
appreciate the ability of people to participate. However, as long as the people are not involved
in regeneration processes initiated by the state, the people will not take any responsibility. Many
authors looked for the possibility of other solu- tions see for instance: Wade, 1987, 1988; Larson
and Bromley, 1990; Ostrom, 1990; Stevenson, 1991; Anant, 1992, among others.
A clear incentive for self-organisation among tail and head enders in an irrigation system was
found by Ostrom and Gardner 1993. Statistical evidence on data from Nepal supports that self-
organised irrigation systems work better than those which are organised by the government.
However, success in self-organised groups came about after a struggle. Initially, self-organisation
led to conflicts and confusion, but when the initia- tive to self-organisation was accepted by some
villagers, other villages followed as well. This ultimately led to a management system for the
whole irrigation canal. Thompson and Wilson 1994 argue for a proper mix between private and
common property regimes. The latter are more adaptive to environmental variability. Nomads
prefer to wander from place to place as the season changes. They take the opportunity to use grazing
pastures far away in the mountains. A common property regime can also reduce risk, because the
productivity can change from place to place, even within the resource.
To sum up, the appropriate management regime of a common pool resource is typically
case-specific. The three case-studies presented in this paper provide clues for different solutions for
three intrinsically different management regimes.
It is also interesting to see the level of people’s participation in forest management as social capi-
tal the information, trust, and norms of reciproc- ity inhering in one’s social network Woolcock,
1998. Following the theory on social capital see for instance Coleman, 1990; Fukuyama, 1995;
Castle, 1998; Woolcock, 1998, villagers them- selves are not aware how their level of participa-
tion can influence the performance at the village level. The emergence of social capital at the vil-
lage level is generally unintentional. We are inter- ested
in identifying
villages with
a high
endowment of social capital, where the level of people’s participation is highest.
3. Forest management in three Indian states
